Radioactivity from a damaged nuclear plant may have contaminated wider areas of Japan than previously thought, a study by a team of researchers showed Tuesday. [...]

Radioisotopes of elements including caesium, tellurium and iodine were blown more than 500 kilometres from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, including to the northern island of Hokkaido and western parts of the country, the team said. [...]

Nagoya University professor Tetsuzo Yasunari said the simulation suggested caesium had dispersed across a wide area, and he called for a nationwide testing of soil, and warnings of hot spots where radiation levels are high, NHK reported.

Radioactive contamination blown over 500 kilometers from Fukushima? The map appears to show it’s more like 900 km:

[...] Hirosaki University, just after the first phreatic explosion, sent many of its staff members to the safe shelters that were set temporarily for the residents of the area around the nuclear power station, to support the radiation survey and monitor the contamination of the safe shelters. [...]

The contributions of Te-132, I-131, Cs-137, Cs-134, and I-132 show increased values when approaching the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Station from Osaki, Miyagi Pref. [...]

Description: The thyroidal effects of short-lived radioiodines such as 132I, 133I and 135I are not well defined. Upon release from nuclear reactors these radioiodines pose potential risk to human health. The effects of 132I and 131I were compared. The same effect was found in goitrogen-stimulated rat thyroid glands (in terms of 50% suppression of thyroid gland wt increase) at injected activities of 93 .mu.Ci 132I and 13 .mu.Ci 131I. Doses were 3 rad/.mu.Ci 132I and 194 rad/.mu.Ci 131I. The same 50% suppression for thyroid dose occurred at about 280 rad from 132I and 2500 rad from 131I, suggesting an approximately 9-fold increase in radiologic effectiveness of 132I over 131I.

TEPCO recently discovered hydrogen buildups within the containment buildings in Fukushima Units 1, 2 and 3. Could there be another explosion, and if so how? Fairewinds conducts a laboratory experiment to show that if oxygen is present with hydrogen in a nuclear power containment, a deflagration explosion might occur.

[T]hose with knowledge of the field who have lent their views to Bellona were not so quick to discard the possibility that an event at a reactor, commercial or otherwise, could be the potential cause of contamination.

“If even the IAEA has acknowledged elevated levels of iodine-131 not only over the Czech Republic but over other European countries as well, then it means something very unpleasant, and uncommon has happened,” the renowned Russian environmentalist and a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Professor Alexei Yablokov told Bellona in an interview. [...]

Other experts that Bellona has talked to agreed that either a serious accident has taken place or an emergency situation at a research or power-generating reactor that necessitated “venting” radioactive substances in the course of an “emergency discharge” into the atmosphere.

The Nuclear Industry’s Pharmaceutical Hypothesis

[W]hat would remain most likely is that the source of the radioactive iodine is either a commercial or research reactor. [...]

For iodine-131 to appear in measurable quantities, it has to result from a chain reaction of uranium fission – something that takes place in nuclear reactors run at commercial nuclear power plants or research organisations.

And despite suggestions made that the concentrations detected in the atmosphere above Europe could have come from medical sources, a health institution that routinely uses radioactive iodine for medical or pharmaceutical purposes would hardly have enough of the substance for the leak to spread as wide as was recorded in measurements taken in countries that are thousands of kilometres apart.

From Sweden to Austria

The very fact that radioactive iodine has been detected in the air above countries that lie as far apart as Sweden and Austria prompts one to suspect that the leak is of a rather substantial scope – meaning that the actual concentrations near the source, which is as yet to be established, would also be significantly higher and present a much graver health risk.

[A] November 11 report by RIA Novosti (in Russian), which said that “iodine-131 is considered to be the most dangerous nuclide produced as a result of nuclear fission. This isotope triggers mutations and destruction of cells that it penetrates, as well as of surrounding tissues, to a depth of several millimetres.”

Nuclear officials said today they believe they have traced the source of a massive, but harmless, radiation plume that has spread across the atmosphere in Europe to an institute in Hungary, but the head of the institute disagrees.

The Hungary Atomic Energy Authority said the Budapest-based Institute of Isotopes was "most probably" the source of the continued leak of trace amounts of Iodine-131 into the atmosphere, according to a statement by the International Atomic Energy Institute. Last week the IAEA first announced they received reports of trace iodine-131 detections from countries "across Europe," but had no idea from where the radiation was leaking.

We had been studying to implement sampling surveys on the ocean soil, completed preparations and conducted the surveys on April 29, 2011. (Previously announced on May 3, 2011)

We conducted analysis for americium as well as curium because plutonium and uranium were detected from the ocean soil* sampled on September 8, 9, 12, 13, 15 and 25. As a result, Americium 241 was detected as shown in the appendix.

Today, we reported the results to NISA and the government of Fukushima Prefecture.

We will continuously conduct the same sampling surveys.

*The results of nuclide analysis for 3 major nuclides (I-131, Cs-134, Cs-137) were previously announced on September 9, 10, 13, 14, 16 and 26.

Remember that reactors 5 and 6 have spent fuel pools as well as reactors. As I pointed out on March 16th:

Kyodo News notes:

Edano said water temperatures in the pools at the No. 5 and No. 6 reactors at the Fukushima plant have been rising as well.

***

The agency said among the three, the situation is the severest at the No. 4 reactor because all the fuel rods are stored in the pool due to the change of the reactor’s shroud. At the No. 5 and No. 6 reactors, up to one-third of the rods are being kept in the pools. The more fuel rods that are kept in a pool, the more radioactive substances could be emitted.

[...] the dosimeter in the bus suddenly showed high readings. It measured 800 microsieverts per hour in front of the No. 4 turbine building and 1 millisieverts–or 1,000 microsieverts–per hour in front of the No. 3 building.

“[The high radiation] is caused by radiation-contaminated debris scattered by the hydrogen explosions,” said an official of Tokyo Electric Power Co., the plant’s operator. “It’s also because radiation has been leaking from the damaged buildings.” [...]

The members on the press tour remained aboard the bus while moving around the plant. After about three hours there, the dosimeter I was carrying recorded 75 microsieverts of accumulated radiation exposure, about 1.25 times higher than the dose received during a chest X-ray.

Description: This week, Dr. Caldicott once again chats with Arnold Gundersen, a nuclear energy consultant with Fairewinds Associates, about the ongoing situation at the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan. [...]

Excerpts at ~29:00 in

“All three reactors that were running had an enormous amount of plutonium in them”

11/14/2011, actual Fukushima workers finally talked about how it was in the plant just after 311.

It was the situation beyond our imagination, no wonder, far from being announced officially.

It was told at the energy, environment symposium held at Tokyo university. The promoter was Mr.Aizawa, vice president of Tepco. (so it is likely that the ACTUAL situation was way worse than it was told at this symposium, but better than no information.) [...]

[B]ecause it was out of power, workers had to go to the actual point to open the lid [to vent the reactors].

However, it was extremely hot because of the exposed fuel inside of the reactor. A worker states, once they stepped on the ladder, the shoes got melted like glue immediately. It was not just the heat, radiation level was also extremely high. [...]

When it entered into the reactor building with the vent, the bottom of the shoes dissolved instantaneously, – -. Immediately after the accident occurring of the Tokyo Electric Power Fukushima first nuclear power plant, one end of testimony of the operator who undertook correspondence became clear. Detailed testimony of the field work member becoming public the first time. [...]

“Because of the vent, entering the reactor building, the torus (foothold) when the foot was used, testimony of the operator that the bottom of the shoes dissolved the [tsu] instantaneously slyly”, has indicated the abnormality.

The inside of the reactor building not only temperature, the radiation dose quite was high. Tokyo Electric Power Company considered the danger of being bombed, age devised the measure such that the operator above field work.

Description: This week, Dr. Caldicott once again chats with Arnold Gundersen, a nuclear energy consultant with Fairewinds Associates, about the ongoing situation at the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan. [...]

Excerpts at ~39:00 in

In the US the accident is being minimized by both the regulators and govt

“I’m really concerned about the long-term health effects on people from Northern Japan”

Its a major concern to me the damage they’re doing to the children of Fukushima

Crumpled trucks and cars, twisted metal, a gutted office building and a huge dented storage tank were visible at the base of the reactor buildings, where radiation readings stood at 1,000 microsieverts (or 1 millisievert) per hour.

On November 1st the government also said that it intended to invite journalists to Dai-ichi for the first time—though it muddied the message by discouraging women (for health reasons, it said, and because there are no women’s loos at the plant).

The government and Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) are trying to achieve a stable condition called a “cold shutdown” of crippled reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant by the end of this year, but they have yet to come to grips with exactly what is happening inside the reactors crippled by the March 11 earthquake and ensuing tsunami. [...]

At the No. 1, 2 and 3 reactors, melted nuclear fuel seems to be penetrating the pressure vessels and even leaking out from the reactor buildings. [...]

Description: This week, Dr. Caldicott once again chats with Arnold Gundersen, a nuclear energy consultant with Fairewinds Associates, about the ongoing situation at the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan. [...]

Excerpts

At ~20:00 in

The xenon cloud bombards people with external gamma rays which are really powerful x-rays… as they decay, they turn into iodine, cesium.

Dramatic increase, a measurable statistically meaningful increase in lung cancer in people that were in that cloud [during Three Mile Island]. That shows up about 3-5 years after the accident.

Most, if not all, reports on this subject did not mention that xenon posed a health risk. In fact, it was the opposite:

“Xenon 133 has a half life of 5.2 days and is relatively harmless, Tetsuo Ito, the head of Kinki University’s Atomic Energy Research Institute, said by phone.” -Bloomberg

“Xenon itself is harmless as it’s not absorbed by organisms or by the environment, and is dispersed in the atmosphere.” -Nature.com

[...] “The kids roll in it, scoop it into buckets – one even samples a mouthful of it. But there are fears something could be lurking in the dirt here and that’s radioactive caesium spewed out by the oozing Fukushima reactors. As the kids play, a few metres away in a corner of the yard the principal Michiko Ikeda is hovering over a Geiger counter and writing down readings.”

According to the municipal government, decontamination operations were conducted on 26 households in two districts during the three weeks from Oct. 26 through Nov. 14. However, radiation levels dropped to target levels at only four of the households.

An official at the municipal government’s radiation-control division acknowledged the difficulty of removing radioactive substances. “Radiation levels will not drop as easily as expected. It takes a lot of time to decontaminate each house.”

The number of births between April and June slumped 25 percent in Fukushima Prefecture and also declined significantly in Tokyo, Chiba and Kanagawa prefectures, but the tally rose in northern and western Japan, a recent survey showed.

The Japan Association of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which conducted the nationwide survey, believes many pregnant evacuees gave birth in areas they considered to be at less risk of radioactive fallout from the Fukushima nuclear crisis.

Based on valid responses from about 750 hospitals that handle deliveries, the association estimated there were 1,000 fewer births from the previous year in Fukushima Prefecture, and a combined total of 2,000 fewer newborns in Tokyo, Chiba and Kanagawa prefectures. [...]

The survey, conducted between July and September, covered the Fukushima Prefecture town of Tomioka, which is designated as a no-go zone, and the town of Namie, which has both a no-go zone and an evacuation preparation zone. [...]

In the leaves of deciduous trees that have grown following the onset of the nuclear disaster in March, 60 to 26,000 becquerels of cesium per kilogram was detected, while the leaves of evergreen trees that have existed since before the March 11 disasters contained levels of cesium about 10 times higher than that, at 18,000 to 220,000 becquerels per kilogram.

[...] Large areas of eastern and northeastern Japan were likely contaminated by the plant, with concentrations of cesium-137 exceeding 1,000 becquerels per kilogram of soil in some places, says the study, which was posted Monday on the website of the National Academy of Sciences. [...]

But they also played down the incident’s impact on the three distant regions. [...]

“The study doesn’t include fallout data on cesium-137 from before March 19.”Because the science ministry didn’t have daily deposition data between March 12 and 19 (a period in which the nuclear plant was racked by hydrogen explosions), the actual figure could be higher than our estimation,” [Tetsuzo Yasunari, a Nagoya University professor and climate system specialist] said. [...]

There is no data for Fukushima up until March 26, and no data is available for Miyagi as of Thurday.

“But as for the western part of Japan and Hokkaido, I don’t think the given figure would increase” even if data from the March 12-19 period — when the hydrogen explosions likely spread a great deal of fallout — were to be added, Yasunari said.”

While Japan has battled a series of food scares in the wake of the nuclear crisis, the latest revelation hits at the heart of the country’s proud national staple: Radioactive cesium exceeding the government limit was detected for the first time in rice harvested in Fukushima prefecture.

About 630 becquerels of cesium per kilogram were found in a rice sample taken from a farm in Fukushima City, the prefectural government said Wednesday night. The levels measure above the government-mandated limit of 500 becquerels per kilogram of harvested rice, prompting immediate calls to limit shipments from the area. [...]

Japanese officials began conducting tests on rice fields in April [...] Mr. Takeuchi said that the Oonami rice fields measured below the limit at the time [...]

Excessive levels of radioactive cesium have been found in rice harvested in the city of Fukushima, the Fukushima prefectural government said Wednesday, marking the first time such levels of the isotope have been detected in the national staple since the nuclear crisis erupted in March. [...]

After testing rice samples from all the 48 cities, towns and villages in the prefecture where rice has been grown this year, the Fukushima governor declared last month that the crop produced in the prefecture, which hosts the crippled Fukushima Daiichi power plant, was safe.

In prefectures affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake, including Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima, 451 people have been recognized by local municipalities as having died due to physical deterioration triggered by the disaster as of the end of October, it has been learned.

As municipal governments have finished examining less than half of the 1,184 applications for such recognition, the number of deaths recognized as resulting from the March 11 disaster is expected to increase dramatically.

These cases are different from deaths in which people were killed directly by the earthquake and tsunami, such as in the collapse of buildings. The later deaths are defined as being indirectly caused by long-term fatigue and worsening of chronic diseases under the stress of living as evacuees. [...]

The Japanese government plans to send military troops in December to the no-go zone around the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station to decontaminate municipal buildings, local media reported Friday. [...]

Those troops ‘would just end up being exposed to radiation to no purpose,’ Hiroaki Koide, assistant professor at the Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute, said. ‘It is impossible to decontaminate. The region’s land itself has been contaminated. And it is impossible to move the land.’

Excerpts from interview with nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen, at ~22:00 in

Obviously Japan is a messs, but we also found in the Cascades, that’s in the Pacific Northwest… Local contamination throughout the Cascades on the order of 100 disintegrations per second in around 2 pounds of dirt [~100 becquerels per kilogram, approaching the levels of many areas in Japan that are relatively close to Fukushima (See Below)]…

If you’re in the Cascades, perhaps you need to wash your shoes and wash your vegetables and things like that…

There’s going to be a little bit of cesium in all our foods…. it’s going to ultimately get in very low concentrations in our food… not true in the Cascades. There’s other things we should be doing there.

It is also likely [farm] production is “partially impacted in neighbouring provinces such as Iwate, Miyagi, Yamagata, Niigata, Tochigi, Ibaraki and Chiba where values of more than 250 becquerels per kilogram cannot be excluded”, [according to a newly published study].

No fuel rods fell off the truck. The Emergency Management Agency said that their staff also used small devices to monitor the level of radiation in the area. An alarm would sound at the detection of radiation, and the device provides a read on the level of radiation present.

The EMA was not able to say what type of fuel rods were being transported on the truck. Often times, uranium rods are used for nuclear power plants or for hospital radiation therapy.

The EMA also said that vehicles carrying such rods are not unusual in the area. [...]

The fire in reactor 2 at nuclear power plant Ringhals, south of Gothenburg, will cost the power plant roughly 1.8 billion kronor ($267 million) in lost profits, reports TV channel SVT.

The fire broke out when performing a pressure test of the reactor’s containment on May 10. Someone forgot to remove a wet vacuum cleaner from the premises, which then caught on fire.

“Those items aren’t supposed to be left in the containment, when testing,” said energy company Vattenfall’s nuclear power head Peter Gango to SVT. “It was a human error, and those shouldn’t occur in our power plants.” [...]

TRIPOLI—Libya’s leaders on Monday elected a U.S.-educated engineering professor to serve as prime minister during the critical postwar period, in which the country will try to create an army out of hundreds of ragtag militias and launch its first democratic elections.

Abdurraheem el-Keib, a dual U.S.-Libyan citizen, was chosen by members of the Transitional National Council who deposited ballots into a transparent box. The televised session was a stark sign of the change from the 42-year dictatorship of Moammar Gaddafi.

With the violence and chaos in Libya escalating as the country descended into civil war earlier this year, many were struck by the image of a country in turmoil.

But one group of mercenary individuals saw just one thing- a lucrative business opportunity.

Four Americans: a former CIA agent, a DC terrorism expert, a Kansas city lawyer and a onetime Republican National Committee member, offered themselves to Gaddafi as consultants for hire, new documents found in a Tripoli government building and published on Facebook show.

While Libya's interim government is quick to hand out contracts for the country's energy resources, questions have been raised over its ability to restore order. There've been clashes between gunmen from different tribal areas, resulting in at least 13 deaths.

Libya's got big plans for its post-war future - with hopes of being reborn as the next Dubai. On paper, it's got the qualifications - sun, beaches and rich oil reserves. Western companies are lining up for their stake - but it's the UK that is likely to come out on top. RT's Laura Smith says Libya now grants UK with oil contract for airstrikes London carried out.

NATO may have ended its operations in Libya, but the Western presence is far from over - with big companies replacing the warplanes. The countries that bombed the oil-rich country are now getting lucrative contracts to rebuild it. RT's Laura Smith adds up the profits of war.

Libya has big plans for its post-war future, hoping to be reborn as the next Dubai and having all the necessary sun and beaches, with oil reserves aplenty. British companies are likely to come out on top of those lining up for a piece of the action.

It was France and the UK who initially led the effort to topple Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. Britain, together with France, sent their navy and fighter jets to establish a sea blockade and assault military targets on Libyan territory.

Now the National Transitional Council (NTC) of Libya says its friends will be rewarded – and these are not just words.

Those increasingly being targeted by “disappearance squads” are family members and associates, even former domestic employees such as gardeners, handymen, and household staff of former regime affiliates. Homes, cars, furniture, of former regime affiliates are being systematically confiscated. Torture has become the normal means to elicit information regarding the whereabouts of individuals thought to still be supporting the former regime.

According to more than a few observers, Gadhafi’s plan to quit selling Libyan oil in U.S. dollars — demanding payment instead in gold-backed “dinars” (a single African currency made from gold) — was the real cause. The regime, sitting on massive amounts of gold, estimated at close to 150 tons, was also pushing other African and Middle Eastern governments to follow suit.

And it literally had the potential to bring down the dollar and the world monetary system by extension, according to analysts. French President Nicolas Sarkozy reportedly went so far as to call Libya a “threat” to the financial security of the world. The “Insiders” were apparently panicking over Gadhafi’s plan.

The "Clash of civilizations" is really a war between banking systems. Gaddafi's real "crime" was he wanted his people free from the predatory behavior of private central banks and debt-based currencies. In other words, Gaddafi wanted an economic system for the people of Libya just like the one the United States originally had. Gaddafi wanted to free his nation from the very same sort of private central banks the Americans had fought the first Revolution to be free of. And the US Government, acting as the military arm of the Federal Reserve system, murdered Gaddafi and slaughtered the Libyan people by the thousands to force them to accept the very same banking system that has destroyed America!

Oil, of course, has been mentioned frequently — Libya is Africa‘s largest oil producer. But one possible reason in particular for Gadhafi’s fall from grace has gained significant traction among analysts and segments of the non-Western media: central banking and the global monetary system.

An analysis of video obtained by Global Post from a rebel fighter who recorded the moment when Col. Muammar Gaddafi was first captured confirms that another rebel fighter, whose identity is unknown, sodomized the former leader as he was being dragged from the drainpipe where he had taken cover.

The footage reveals the mindset of the NATO backed forces, violent thugs that U.S. taxpayers are funding as their homes are foreclosed. It is a mindset that clearly knows no bounds and has been unleashed on sovereign nations worldwide.

Just weeks ago it was believed that the first act of Al-Qaeda’s new “democratic” Libyan government was shooting Gaddafi in the head at close range without due process or formerly charging him with any crime. No, the first act was sodomy with a foreign object on a wounded man.

Of course, the Al-Qaeda backed rebels would not have been successful in capturing Libya and murdering Gaddafi absent massive NATO air bombardment of Tripoli, which resulted in thousands of civilian casualties. Shortly after the start of the conflict in March, Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, the leader of the anti-Gaddafi rebel army, admitted that the rebel ranks include Al-Qaeda terrorists who have killed U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This all makes sense when you realize that Al-Qaeda is run by the Pentagon and is used as a tool of regional destabilization against governments like Gaddafi’s that oppose globalist objectives.

While Gaddafi may have been a tyrant and dictator, he was also an eccentric nationalist that opposed Western colonization of resource-rich Libya.

On gaining power he immediately ordered the shutdown of American and British military bases, including Wheelus Air Base. He told Western officials that he would expel their companies from Libya's oil fields unless they shared more revenue. In his warning, he alluded to consultation with Nasser. The oil companies complied with the demand, increasing Libya's share from 50 to 79 percent.

Under Gaddafi, Libya exported as much oil per capita as Saudi Arabia, and through various social programs Libya achieved the highest living standards in Africa. Libya also remained debt free, with no loan whatsoever from the IMF, World Bank or any other source of western financial enslavement.

Gaddafi also planned to introduce the gold dinar, a single African currency made from gold. This would have allowed Libya and African countries to do business without using the worthless fiat U.S. dollar, which is continuously devalued by the private Federal Reserve printing excess money out of nothing and giving it to their bankster friends.

The Gaddafi government also funded the Great Man-Made River, a network of pipes that supplies water from the Sahara Desert in Libya, from the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System fossil aquifer. It is the world's largest underground network of pipes (2820 km) and aqueducts in the world. The project consists of more than 1,300 wells, most more than 500m deep, and supplies 6,500,000 m3 of fresh water per day to the cities of Tripoli, Benghazi, Sirte and elsewhere. Gaddafi described it as the "Eighth Wonder of the World."

The globalists decided that nationalist Gaddafi had to go before he inspired other world leaders to protect national sovereignty and interests. Libyans must now live under a brutal terrorist regime, whose members will be handsomely rewarded when Fortune 500 companies arrive to exploit Libya’s natural resources while enslaving the population in debt.

Libya's rebel militants recently named a new puppet "prime minister" this week, Abdurrahim el-Keib. El-Keib has spent decades in the United States and is former employee of the Petroleum Institute, which is sponsored by British Petroleum (BP), Shell, France's Total, the Japan Oil Development Company, and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. El-Keib is listed as a "Professor and Chairman" in his Petroleum Institute profile which also describes extensive research conducted by him sponsored by various US government agencies and departments over the years. Therefore, el-Keib, like his predecessor Jalil, is Libyan in name only and has been working for Western corporations, governments, and institutions for decades.

In all the violence and chaos, one thing is crystal-clear: unless people refuse to participate in wars of conquest and diligently boycott corporate sponsors of the Council on Foreign Relations and Brookings Institution, Gaddafi and Libyans won’t be the last ones to get sodomized by the New World Order.

Ethan Jacobs holds a Juris Doctor and Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science. Ethan’s passion is researching and writing about important issues to defeat every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

NATO officials are worried the organization may be investigated by the International Criminal Court after its prosecutor said allegations of crimes committed by NATO in Libya would be examined "impartially and independently," according to diplomats accredited to NATO headquarters.

The diplomats said action to pre-empt a war crimes investigation would likely include an immediate internal legal review of all incidents in which NATO bombing or other actions caused civilian casualties.

The charges against NATO's alleged "humanitarian action" (including the extrajudicial assassination of a sitting head of state, killing and maiming non-combatants for life, dropping depleted uranium bombs, and torture of black Africans) DOES need to be investigated to the fullest extent of the law, and I hope sincerely that the ICC cannot be badgered, bullied, or bought off to prevent such an inquiry from happening.

Billions of dollars worth of U.S.-funded reconstruction projects in Afghanistan and Iraq could fall into disrepair over the next few years because inadequate provisions have been made to pay for their ongoing operations and maintenance, according to a report to be released Friday by a bipartisan legislative commission.

The Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan says it “sees no indication” that the Pentagon, the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development are “effectively taking sustainability risks into account when devising new projects or programs.”

If immediate steps are not taken to address sustainability issues, the commission says, “the United States faces new waves of waste in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Essentially throwing these activists under the bus, New York Times exposes that the April 6 Youth Movement in Egypt, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, and Entsar Qadhi of Yemen amongst others, received training and financing from the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute, and the Neo-Conservative lined Freedom House.

The New York Times goes on to explain that these organizations are in turn funded by the National Endowment for Democracy which receives 100 million USD from Congress while Freedom House receives most of its money from the US State Department. While the New York Times asserts "no one doubts that the Arab uprisings are home grown," leaders of groups now admittedly funded and trained by the US are anything but "home grown." The most prominent example is the April 6 Movement of Egypt led by Mohamed ElBaradei of the International Crisis Group. ElBaradei sitting along side George Soros, Kenneth Adelman, Wesley Clark, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, within a US foreign policy think-tank engenders a considerable amount of "doubt."

Also conceding involvement is the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED), chaired by various Council on Foreign Relations and Brookings Institute alumni. POMED claims that they helped protesters develop skills and to network. Such training has taken place annually under Movements.org starting in 2008 where Egypt's April 6 movement among many others, learned techniques to subvert their government. Movements.org of course is sponsored by a conglomerate of corporations and government agencies including the US State Department, Google, MTV, the Edelman public relations firm, Facebook, CBS News, MSNBC, Pepsi, and others. Despite the claim that such meddling is "promoting democracy," looking at the sponsors and war mongering interests involved in this operation, it appears to be more about promoting global military and economic hegemony.

As civil war roars on in Libya and Colonel Muammar Gadhafi vows to remain in power, reports surfaced that the Northern African country entrusted $1.3 billion through its sovereign wealth fund to Goldman Sachs in 2007, of which the investment bank lost approximately 98%, sparking the ire of Libyan officials.

"So, we do God's Work (reg TM) and order the White House to bomb Libya before they can take us to court! Problem solved!" -- Gold In Mah Sacks

Ham said it was important for the U.S. to turn control over to NATO because many of the troops involved in the Libya strikes are preparing to go toIran or Afghanistan or have just recently returned from the warfront.

Now, is this a typo? I don't know. But, I've checked this story in many different places and each iteration says exactly the same thing: Iran! Are our troops preparing to go to Iran? What conclusion are we to draw from this? Here's the entire article:

General says US may consider sending troops into Libya as part of any international force

By Lolita C. Baldor, The Associated Press

Webmaster's Commentary:

"...preparing to go to Iran...."?!?!?

With three major military misadventures going catastrophically badly right now, the US is seriously thinking about invading Iran?!?!?

Forgive me, but it appears that the US government has just lost semblance of sanity, for Ham to be making that remark.

It also appears that none of the corporate news entities around had the guts to challenge Ham on this.

Okay, Shimon, here's your rifle, and here's your parachute. Don't trip climbing into that transport plane. Have fun, and we'll call Tehran and tell them you are on your way to kick their butts all by yourself! Because OUR kids are sitting this one out!

Washington is seeking to stop Iran's nuclear program by means of maximum covert operations including the assassination of Iranian scientists. Speaking at the Republican presidential debate in Spartanburg, South Carolina, on Saturday former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich openly advocated increased covert terrorism against Iran. He suggested employing “maximum covert operations to block and disrupt the Iranian program including taking out their scientists, including breaking up their systems. All of it covertly, all of it deniable.” Gingrich advocated “actively funding every dissident group in Iran.”

Three Department of Defense mortuary workers have given statements that at least some of the remains of dozens of US troops who died in Iraq or Afghanistan have been thrown away into the Air Force’s landfill in Dover Delaware...

Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann is pretty sure waterboarding isn’t torture — but she says it would be “absurd” to find out for herself.

During a recent CBS/National Journal debate, the candidate enthusiastically said she supported the interrogation technique.

“It was very effective,” she claimed. “It gained information for our country.”

"It's very useful! Why, the very first Arab we waterboarded confessed to shooting down Columbia and Challenger, setting fire to the Hindenburg, pushing that ice in front of Titanic, and being Jack the Ripper!"

Christians have an obligation, a mandate, a commission, a holy responsibility to reclaim the land for Jesus Christ-to have dominion in the civil structures, just as in every other aspect of life and godliness.

But it is dominion that we are after. Not just a voice.

It is dominion we are after. Not just influence.

It is dominion we are after. Not just equal time.

It is dominion we are after.

World conquest. That's what Christ has commissioned us to accomplish. We must win the world with the power of the Gospel. And we must never settle for anything less.

"Just like those evil Muslims are trying to do, only it's okay for us to do it because God said so!"

LONDON (AP) — Poised on the brink of power, Tony Blair made an impassioned vow: Britain's jealously-held culture of official secrecy would be dramatically swept away.

Fifteen years later, the country has a thriving right to information law, with almost 44,000 requests made last year, and recently announced it would accept demands for government data posted using Twitter. So former prime minister Blair must now reflect with pride on delivering his promise?

Not exactly.

"You idiot. You naive, foolish, irresponsible nincompoop," Blair wrote of himself in his autobiography "A Journey" last year, recalling his adoption of the law in 2005. "There is really no description of stupidity, no matter how vivid, that is adequate. I quake at the imbecility of it."

In addition to the exclusive EIR interview with former CENTCOM commander, Gen. Joseph P. Hoar (USMC-ret.), other military voices are being raised against the danger of general war, posed by the threat of an Israeli or U.S. attack on Iran.

The US Air Force has a new 30,000-pound bomb in its arsenal designed to penetrate targets buried deep underground, a spokesman said Tuesday.

The Air Force started taking delivery of the giant bomb, the “Massive Ordnance Penetrator,” in September, said Lieutenant Colonel Jack Miller.

Under an August 2 contract worth $32 million, the aerospace firm Boeing is due to produce eight of the giant MOP bombs to fulfil the Air Force’s “operational needs,” according to Miller.

Or ... The United States, the only nation to actually use nuclear weapons of mass destruction against the civilians of another nation, having ended WW2 with nuclear weapons, plans to start WW3 with nuclear weapons, specifically those 30Kt tactical nukes they have been building since the Bush administration, and needs a cover story to fool the public.

On 14 November South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo stated, "Hundreds of North Korean scientists and engineers are working at about 10 nuclear and missile facilities in Iran, including Natanz, The North Koreans are apparently rotated every six months." Russian technicians also remain at Iran’s first nuclear electrical energy facility, Bushehr. So, any aerial strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities could result in significant numbers of dead Russian and North Korean specialists as “collateral damage,” with all the diplomatic uncertainties that might ensue from Moscow and Pyongyang as the body bags start arriving home.

Russia and Korea are likely to react far more strongly to Israel's murder of their civilians than the United States did when Israel murdered that aid worker from New York in international waters last year.

As the nuclear crisis over Iran heats up, Canada is veering toward a dangerous place.

Israel is again contemplating a military attack on Iran to prevent its developing atomic weapons. This time it’s not clear that U.S. President Barack Obama can forestall the Jewish state.

Indeed, Obama has pointedly refused to rule out American involvement in such an attack.

And Canada? As the Star reported this week, Defence Minister Peter MacKay is in conversations with his Israeli counterpart, Ehud Barak.

In the past, Canada would have happily stayed on the sidelines.

Under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, however, Canada has taken a more militant approach to international affairs. His support for Israel has been rock-hard. He has also shown himself willing to deploy Canada’s small but effective military in combat operations the government deems politically useful.

This spring, Harper was one of the first western leaders to sign onto NATO’s air war against Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi.

Iran, however, is a far trickier proposition than Libya.

It is bigger and better armed. Its population, while divided on much, appears united its opposition to foreign intervention.

It fought a gruelling, eight-year war against Iraqi invaders in the 1980s and never gave up.

As well, the entire conflict over Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons is fraught with complications.

First among them is lack of clarity. The report from the International Atomic Energy Agency that sparked the latest crisis is not as clear-cut as it might seem.

The UN agency suspects Iran is continuing to develop nuclear weapons. But, as the report makes clear, it has no definitive proof.

It now appears that this wasn’t the case, at least according to a Western intelligence official cited by Timeand the former director of an Iranian state-run organization closely linked to the Iranian regime, also anonymous, quoted by the British Guardian.

The former Iranian official told the Guardian, “I believe that Saturday’s explosion was part of the covert war against Iran, led by Israel.”

The Israeli press seems to be echoing this sentiment, regardless of the fact that Iranian officials say that it was a purely accidental event that occurred when Revolutionary Guard troops were transporting munitions.

The anonymous Western intelligence official quoted by Time also rejects the Iranian’s explanation that it was an accident.

“Don’t believe the Iranians that it was an accident,” he told Time, while also claiming that other acts of sabotage are being planned in an attempt to slow the alleged Iranian nuclear weapons program.

If Mossad agents were indeed behind the blast, one could say that it was quite a successful operation.

Among the 17 killed in the blast was Major General Hassan Moqqadam, an individual that the Iranian state media has characterized as a pioneering researcher in Iranian missile development along with Mostafa Izadi, an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander who was in charge of “ensuring self-sufficiency” in Iranian armaments.

Losing both of these individuals might be a considerable setback for the Iranian missile and weapons programs, especially given the international sanctions leveled against them which are likely to become increasingly harsh as time goes on.

Iran said on Sunday it had detected the Duqu computer virus that experts say is based on Stuxnet, the so-called "cyber-weapon" discovered last year and believed to be aimed at sabotaging the Islamic Republic's nuclear sites.

IRAN says its defence computer systems have been infected with a ''supervirus'' similar to the one believed to have been created by Israel that severely damaged Tehran's nuclear program last year.

Anti-virus experts have identified a virus called Duqu that they say shares properties with the Stuxnet worm apparently created by Mossad, the Israeli security service. It was thought to have targeted the nuclear program's centrifuges, the devices that enrich uranium to create nuclear fuel.

It was not clear from the Iranian statement whether Duqu had also struck nuclear facilities, but it was the regime's first admission of damage.

The malicious computer code that bears similarities to Stuxnet — the worm that sabotaged Iran’s nuclear program and prompted speculation about U.S. and Israel involvement — has now spread to eight countries, according to researchers, but there’s still widespread disagreement on whether it is, in fact, the “son of Stuxnet.”

Researchers at Symantec say the number of confirmed infections of the so-called Duqu malware is still limited to a handful of organizations, and there’s been no sign of another Stuxnet-like attack along the lines that the company has suggested is possible. Still, samples have now turned up in the Netherlands, Switzerland, Ukraine, India, Sudan, Vietnam and, of all places, Iran.

A US blogger who has frequently published Israeli security information yesterday claimed that the Mossad secret service and the Iranian dissident group Mujaheddin-e Khalq were jointly responsible for the blast at an Iranian missile base on Sunday in which 17 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard were killed, including a senior commander.

Richard Silverstein cited an Israeli "with extensive senior political and military experience" as the source of the information.

The blast at a military base 40km from Tehran was felt in the capital. The base reportedly stores long-range shahab missiles capable of hitting Israel. The senior officer killed in the explosion was General Hassan Tehrani Moqaddam, said to be the top commander in Iran's missile force.

A Western intelligence source on Monday was quoted as saying by Time magazine that the Israeli Mossad is responsible for Saturday's blast in a military base near Tehran. "Don't believe the Iranians that it was an accident," the official told the publication, adding that other sabotage is being planned to impede the Iranian ability to develop and deliver a nuclear weapon. "There are more bullets in the magazine," the official conveyed.

Israel plans not only to attack Iran’s fledgling nuclear program, but also its civilian infrastructure.

Eli Lake, writing for The Daily Beast, cites current and former U.S. intelligence officials who say Israel’s target list includes Iran’s electric grid, internet, cellphone network, and emergency frequencies for firemen and police officers.

Officials say Israel has developed a weapon that simulates a maintenance cellphone signal commanding cell networks to “sleep” and stopping transmissions. It also has electronic jammers that can interrupt emergency frequencies for first responders and police.

Iranian officials revealed that one of the 17 men killed in a huge explosion at a munitions depot was a key Revolutionary Guard commander who headed Iran’s missile program. And the IRNA state news agency reported that scientists had discovered a new computer virus in their systems, a more sophisticated version of the Stuxnet worm deployed last year to foul up Iran’s centrifuges.

Iran said the army base explosion was an accident and the new Duqu virus was contained. But Israeli newspapers and some U.S. experts said it appeared to be more from an ongoing secret operation by the CIA and Israel’s Mossad to eliminate Iran’s nuclear threat.

The Iranian government has accused the head of the U.N.'s nuclear regulatory agency of turning Iran's nuclear scientists into human targets for the Mossad and the CIA by publishing their names in its new report on Iran's nuclear weapons program.

"The release of the names of the Iranian nuclear scientists by the agency has made them targets for assassination by terrorist groups as well as the Israeli regime and the U.S. intelligence services," said Iranian envoy Ali Asghar Soltanieh in a letter to Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The Iranian army was set to launch an air defense drill Friday evening simulating an attack on the country's nuclear facilities, the Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

According to the regime's mouthpiece, the four-day drill will be held in eastern Iran and stress "the characteristics of the Islamic Republic's defense doctrine in the framework of the heightened air defense alert level."

Looking at how much more intently the war drums have been pounding recently, one can hardly blame Iran for wanting to be at its most heightened state of preparation right now.

I do not know what kinds of conversations the Israeli Ambassador to Russia, Roi Rosenblit, and the Russian Ambassador to Israel, Mr. S. Yakovlev, are having right now, but my bet would be to characterize them as singularly unpleasant.

Russia has gone to great lengths, recently, to warn Israel and the US against any military conflict against Iran.

One would like to hope that those in the bowels of both countries are listening, with both ears.

Iraq’s top general made an official visit to Iran on Sunday and called for the boosting of ties between Tehran and Baghdad, which fought a 1980-1988 war, an military website quoted him as saying.

The armed forces chief of staff, General Babak Zebari, made the remarks during a meeting with General Mohammad Pakpour, the commander of the elite Revolutionary Guards’ ground forces.

This is the reason Israel is all hot-and-bothered to attack Iran now, while the American kids are stuck in Iraq right in the path of an Iranian counter-attack. After the Americans are gone, Iraq will just let the Iranians drive right through to Israel.

There is evidence of gross media manipulation and falsification from the outset of the protest movement in southern Syria on March 17th.An armed insurrection integrated by Islamists and supported covertly by Western intelligence is central to an understanding of what is occurring on the ground.

The Western media has presented the events in Syria as part of the broader Arab pro-democracy protest movement, spreading spontaneously from Tunisia, to Egypt, and from Libya to Syria.

Media coverage has focused on the Syrian police and armed forces, which are accused of indiscriminately shooting and killing unarmed "pro-democracy" demonstrators. While these police shootings did indeed occur, what the media failed to mention is that among the demonstrators there were armed gunmen as well as snipers who were shooting at both the security forces and the protesters.

The "Free Syria Army" is literally an army of militant extremists, many drawn not from Syria's military ranks, but from the Muslim Brotherhood, carrying heavy weapons back and forth over the Turkish and Lebanese borders, funded, supported, and armed by the United States, Israel, and Turkey. The latest evidence confirming this comes in the form of a report out of the International Institute for Strategic Studies where Senior Fellow for Regional Security at IISS-Middle East Emile Hokayem openly admits Syria's opposition is armed and prepared to drag Syria's violence into even bloodier depths.

This report comes in sharp contrast to the propaganda fed via the corporate-media and the West's foreign ministers on a daily basis, where the violence is portrayed as one-sided, with Syria's President Bashar al-Assad "gunning down" throngs of peaceful, placard waving protesters. Just as in Libya where these so-called "peaceful protesters" turned out to be hordes of genocidal racist Al Qaeda mercenaries, led by big-oil representatives, fighting their cause upon a verified pack of lies, so too is Syria's "pro-democracy" movement which is slowly being revealed as yet another militant brand of extremists long cultivated by Anglo-American intelligence agencies, whose leadership is harbored in London and Washington and their foot soldiers supplied a steady stream of covert military support and overt rhetorical support throughout the compromised corporate media.

The unrest in Syria from the beginning was entirely backed by Western corporate-financier interests and part of a long-planned agenda for region-wide regime change. Syria has been slated for regime change since as early as 1991. In 2002, then US Under Secretary of State John Bolton added Syria to the growing "Axis of Evil." It would be later revealed that Bolton's threats against Syria manifested themselves as covert funding and support for opposition groups inside of Syria spanning both the Bush and Obama administrations.

In an April 2011 CNN article, acting State Department spokesman Mark Toner stated, "We're not working to undermine that [Syrian] government. What we are trying to do in Syria, through our civil society support, is to build the kind of democratic institutions, frankly, that we're trying to do in countries around the globe. What's different, I think, in this situation is that the Syrian government perceives this kind of assistance as a threat to its control over the Syrian people."

Toner's remarks came after the Washington Post released cables indicating the US has been funding Syrian opposition groups since at least 2005 and continued until today.

In an April AFP report, Michael Posner, the assistant US Secretary of State for Human Rights and Labor, stated that the "US government has budgeted $50 million in the last two years to develop new technologies to help activists protect themselves from arrest and prosecution by authoritarian governments." The report went on to explain that the US "organized training sessions for 5,000 activists in different parts of the world. A session held in the Middle East about six weeks ago gathered activists from Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon who returned to their countries with the aim of training their colleagues there." Posner would add, "They went back and there's a ripple effect." That ripple effect of course is the "Arab Spring," and in Syria's case, the impetus for the current unrest threatening to unhinge the nation and invite in foreign intervention.

With planted "speculation" running through the corporate media that a recent explosion, amongst several other "incidents" in Iran, were the work of Western covert operations, and the Jerusalem Post all but admitting the entire Western-backed destabilization in Syria aims not at ushering in "democracy" or upholding "human rights," but to weaken Iran by proxy, it is clear that everything within Wall Street and London's power is being done to provoke Iran. Iran has downplayed the recent explosion at their military base as an accident and has thus far maintained a persistent patience in the face of criminal provocations and overt acts of war by an alarmingly and increasingly depraved West.

It is quite clear that the stratagems spelled out in the corporate-funded Brookings Institute report "Which Path to Persia?" have been read and understood by both sides and that Iran realizes that any act of retaliation not expertly played, only gives the West what it has stated it wants - an excuse to go to war with the Islamic Republic. Should the public in Syria, Iran, and throughout the West also read "Which Path to Persia?" and realize that the only threat Iran and its allies pose to the West is toward the extraterritorial ambitions of Wall Street and London, perhaps a bloody, entirely unnecessary war can be avoided, and the first steps taken toward dismantling the parasitic corporate-financier oligarchy that has misled the world for the past several decades.

Eric BlairActivist PostIn what is becoming Western foreign policy déjà vu, another disgruntled segment of a Muslim nation's population, armed by NATO, has taken offensive military action against their government.

VOA News reports that "rebels of the Free Syrian Army fired rockets and machine guns at an air force intelligence complex in the Damascus suburb of Harasta early Wednesday."

The news came from a "German-based spokesman" although there was no independent confirmation of the attack which reportedly killed 11 people.

Meanwhile Turkey and Arab League nations met to consider more sanctions against Syria for "refusing to end the crackdown" against the violent rebels who have been consistently referred to as peaceful protesters by the Western media.

Syria has blamed much of the violence on foreign-backed terrorists, and evidence is mounting that proves their concerns valid.

Now with yesterday's military strike, it seems the situation in Syria can no longer be defined as the Assad regime "cracking down" on harmless discontents who once again seem to be a small minority of Syrian civilians.

The wave of discontent in the Middle East and Northern Africa has allowed Western powers to assert influence that would have been difficult otherwise. The result has been regime change by civilian uprisings in nations like Tunisia and Egypt, and an eight-month NATO war in Libya to oust Gaddafi.

The West has followed the exact same blueprint for regime change in Syria as they did in Libya. First, they acknowledge support for the angry civilians. Then they impose crippling sanctions by executive order. Next, they arm the proxy army of rebels who are then coordinated by the foreign organizers like the un-named German spokesman referred to above. And if Libya is indeed the model, NATO airstrikes will be on the horizon.

The deja vu in Syria is not without hypocrisy, as no reason has been given as to why popular protests in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and even the United States have been allowed to be crushed without hardly a peep from the Western media.

As the United States preaches the right to free speech in these targeted nations, "Occupy" camps are being forcefully dismantled and protesters evicted, most notably in New York and Oregon. In Oakland, California, peaceful students were brutalized by stormtrooper police. Imagine if China began to secretly arm Occupy groups to defend themselves against police brutality.

The intellectual hypocrisy aside, NATO and the U.S. march forward with their bloodthirsty campaign for regime change yet again in Syria, while the drumbeat continues for striking Iran. With Western media clearly defining the enemies, it seems no one will stop these continued violent interventions in the Middle East and beyond.

Linda S. Heard writes: It will also leave the Lebanese and the Palestinians, who have few bargaining chips, more vulnerable to Tel Aviv

Secondly, any US-led military intervention in Syria would favour Israel. As a quid pro quo, any new Syrian government would be under Washington's heel and would be leant on to make concessions to cement peace with Israel and would, without doubt, be forced to halt Hezbollah's weapons supplies and cut ties with Iran. That scenario would leave the Lebanese and the Palestinians, who have few bargaining chips as it is, more vulnerable to Israeli aggression than ever.

Writing in Ha'aretz Aluf Benn says Israel "must probe for strategic opportunities — for example, a scenario in which the Al Assad regime is replaced by a pro-western government that will cut itself off from Iran and Hezbollah".

In what represents the most confrontation between the West and Russia over the issue of Syrian intervention to date, Haaretz reports that a Syrian news agency said that Russian warships are due to arrive in Syrian territorial waters.

Haaretz characterizes this move as “a clear message to the West that Moscow would resist any foreign intervention in the country’s civil unrest,” and indeed it is a clear message that comes with threat of military repercussions.

Previously Russia has made it clear that they will not support yet another Western intervention in Syria but with the Arab League suspending Syria this week over their crackdown on armed opposition protesters, the stakes are getting higher by the day.

Russia, behaving like the geopolitical adult in the room in this instance, certainly has made it clear that outside intervention, unlike the Libyan NATO "model", will not be tolerated here.

If NATO is planning some kind of military intervention here, then it is certainly rolling into a headlong confrontation with Russia, which may well spark a world war.

Russian warships are due to arrive at Syrian territorial waters, a Syrian news agency said on Thursday, indicating that the move represented a clear message to the West that Moscow would resist any foreign intervention in the country's civil unrest.

Also on Friday, a Syrian official said Damascus has agreed "in principle" to allow an Arab League observer mission into the country.Medvedev and Assad in Syria

But the official said Friday that Syria was still studying the details. The official asked not to be named because the issue is so sensitive.

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia is facing a heightened risk of being drawn into conflicts at its borders that have the potential of turning nuclear, the nation's top military officer said Thursday.

Gen. Nikolai Makarov, chief of the General Staff of the Russian armed forces, cautioned over NATO's expansion eastward and warned that the risks of Russia being pulled into local conflicts have "risen sharply."

Makarov added, according to Russian news agencies, that "under certain conditions local and regional conflicts may develop into a full-scale war involving nuclear weapons."

Russian General Nikolai Makarov said NATO’s eastward expansion meant the risk of Russia being dragged into conflicts had ‘risen sharply’. General Makarov is the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Russia , the highest military post of the Russian armed forces.

Many Eastern European countries which used to be part of the Warsaw Pact, a former Soviet sphere of influence, have since joined NATO, an issue which irritated Russia. Russia believes NATO is ganging up with these countries to encircle its western border.

The General said: ‘The possibility of local armed conflicts along nearly the whole border has increased dramatically. In certain conditions, I do not rule out local and regional armed conflicts developing into a large-scale war, including using nuclear weapons.’

Israel's ultimate ambition may be to goad the US and Russia into a mutually destructive nuclear war in which we stupid goyim destroy each other, leaving Israel to rule the post WW3 world with the threat from their own nuclear arsenal.

Russia is facing a heightened risk of being drawn into conflicts at its borders that have the potential of turning nuclear, the nation’s top military officer said Thursday.

Gen. Nikolai Makarov, chief of the General Staff of the Russian armed forces, cautioned over NATO’s expansion eastward and warned that the risks for Russia to be pulled into local conflicts have “risen sharply.”

This is Russia's not so subtle demand to NATO regarding Iran and Syria: BACK OFF!!

One of Iran's top military commanders warned Saudi Arabia on Sunday that its decision to send forces to Bahrain to quell protests by Shiite Muslims would spark unrest at home, a semiofficial Iranian news agency reported.

Firouzabadi, who is known for his anti-Saudi rhetoric, also lashed out at the United States, claiming Washington was behind Riyadh's move into Bahrain so that it could preserve an American naval base there.

"Washington ordered Saudi Arabia as its mercenary to thwart the Bahrainis' popular revolution so that the U.S. can maintain its base," Firouzabadi was reported as saying.

Believe me, I am absolutely no fan of theocracies of any stripe; however, having said that, Gen. Hasan Firouzabadi got this absolutely correct regarding Bahrain.

But what he had better be paying attention to is the situation in Syria right now. Although the US has not recalled its ambassador, US sanctions have been placed on a number of heads of government here.

If the situation escalates, and there is a US military intervention here, Iran and Syria have a mutual defense pact.

This will pull Iran in to the conflict in Syria's side, which will mean that Iran and the US will be at war.

Nerve recently reported, as did most of the internet, on the alleged detaining of "gay girl blogger" Amina Arraf in Syria. Many expressed concern for the brave, queer, multinational girl who wrote passionately and eloquently about government repression and life as a lesbian in one of the least gay-friendly nations in the world. But new facts have come to light that suggest Arraf might not be who she says she is, and more to the point, might not actually exist.

The 40-year-old married man's blog, A Gay Girl in Damascus, described life in the Syrian city amid the current political unrest.

It gained a worldwide readership and was closely followed by news reporters.

The blog, dating back to February this year, claimed to document the life of 25-year-old Amina Abdallah Arraf al-Omari, a half-Syrian, half-American lesbian living in Damascus.

Entries covered her social life and relationships, but "Amina" also criticised President Bashar al-Assad and spoke about her role in the growing anti-government protests.

Tom MacMaster's excusefor this hoax is that he "meant well" and the fact that it was a hoax should not lead us to conclude that the issues raised by the hoax are not real. Tom is, of course, clearly unrepentant and scrambling to protect the "Let's start war in Syria" agenda. Tom MacMaster apologizes for harming the cause, yet insists the cause, selling another war in Syria, is just.

The hoaxer behind a fake blog that claimed to be written by a lesbian Syrian-American living in Damascus, and which caught worldwide attention, has defended the stunt.

A writer giving his name as Tom MacMaster, a US student studying at Edinburgh University, admitted the narrative was fictional but insisted it “created an important voice for issues I feel strongly about.”

So apparently Tom was raised to believe that simply feeling strongly about something is a license to lie and deceive, is that it?

Israel is reportedly preparing to strike arms depots and weapons manufacturing plants in Syria, claiming they belong to the Islamic resistance movement Hezbollah, a report says.

Tel Aviv has escalated its military presence in the occupied Golan Heights and the northern part of the Shebaa Farms, the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz said, citing a report in the Saturday edition of the Kuwaiti daily Al Rai.

The report quoted European sources as saying that recent Israeli reconnaissance flights, which violated Lebanese and Syrian airspace, are indications that Israel is ready to start a war in the area.

"Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Sunday that the Islamic Republic will stand by Lebanon and Syria should Israel attack them."

“The Iranian government and nation are willing to support Lebanon and Syria against any possible Israeli aggression,” Mottaki said in a joint press conference in Tehran with his Lebanese counterpart Ali Al Shami."

Any attack against Syria (or Lebanon) will be seen as an attack against Iran, and this may be the way Israel has decided to create a "justification" for attacking Iran.

This may well be the reason Israel bought about 2 billion dollars' worth of fuel from the US earlier this month; to fuel a war against Syria, dragging in both Iran, and the US.

This is a real game changer. It wouldn't take long to eliminate the Israeli Navy with these. They could be taken out at anchor in port with these. The Russian Kornet was a real game changer in the 2006 dust up in Lebanon. This will be a game changer at sea.

With a range of nearly 200 miles, the Yakhont is known for its accuracy and its ability to avoid detection because of its speed and low trajectory. It is also far more sophisticated that any of the anti-ship missiles presently in Syria's arsenal.

Is it just me or are the Israeli's suffering from what could turn into a terminal case of stupidity. Yup! The Yakhonts are a game changer. The entire Israeli Navy can be sunk at anchor in harbor with these cruise missiles. The Israelis know it and they have gone off their rockers!

Israel threatens to decide against potential military cooperation with Russia, outraged at Moscow's refusal to cancel its weapons sales to Syria.

"We will have to reconsider all the proposed deals with Russia. Moscow did not show the needed understanding to our requests," the British aerospace weekly Flight International quoted a senior Israeli official as saying on Wednesday.

Russia plans to by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) from Israel and develop a local manufacturing facility with Tel Aviv's help, the periodical added.

Former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas referred in a book he published entitled "Coups et blessures" (Assaults and Injuries), that "The "Israelis" are doing whatever they want in France, and are controlling the French Intelligence with what serves them".

Former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas referred in a book he published entitled "Coups et blessures" (Assaults and Injuries), that "The "Israelis" are doing whatever they want in France, and are controlling the French Intelligence with what serves them".

(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - Former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas referred in a book he published entitled "Coups et blessures" (Assaults and Injuries), that "The "Israelis" are doing whatever they want in France, and are controlling the French Intelligence with what serves them".

On another hand, Dumas confirmed that the "Israelis" are mistaken not to negotiate with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, even if the latter refuses any kind of agreement. He also added, "I made some special relations with him [Bashar al-Assad] like those I had with his father (President Hafez Assad)".Furthermore, Dumas revealed in the same book that when current Zionist President, Shimon Perez was still the entity's Foreign Minister, he advised Dumas to pay President Hafez Assad a visit in 1992. At that time Perez was aware that the US is seeking a new way to understanding with Damascus, so he [Perez] believed that France could also gain interest through being involved in the Middle East peace process.

In this context, Former French Minister added, "The deceased Syrian President had little faith in Perez, and he knew the mazes of the internal "Israeli" relations". Hafez al-Assad was aware that the "Israeli" Foreign Minister might adopt unilateral initiatives, and therefore it won't lead into anything effective".

In his "Coups et blessures", Dumas also mentioned the Islamic Republic of Iran, which he had visited several times and met its former Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Wilayati, and former President Hachemi Rafsanjani. Dumas strictly affirmed, "The Iranian atomic bomb is in my view similar to the weapons of mass destruction possessed by former Iraqi President Sadam Hussein, i.e. I don't believe in all of that. I believe that all what occurred was a misleading of facts". He also referred to that, "The confusion in the French policies goes back to known interferences, where "Israel's" close presence makes all analysis suspicious".

On the same level, Dumas defended the Iranian point of view regarding the need to possess nuclear energy reactors, where its oil reserve might not last for more than 60 years. He confirmed that Iranian seek their civil nuclear program at the time when all reports refer to the non-existence of any nuclear weapons. In the context of his book, Roland Dumas clarified that former French Foreign Minister François Mitterrand had close relations with the "Israelis", even if he wasn't open about it.

On another level, he confirmed that the "Americans did indeed plan to kill Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi through raiding him with planes in the 1986, referring to that France did not allow them to exploit its airspace for that. Gaddafi had thanked France for delaying the arrival of the US drones for more than 15 hours because of the French refusal, which gave Gaddafi time to leave the target place".Regarding the "Israeli" policy adopted in the region, Dumas stated, "I don't agree with the "Israeli" policy, and I was loyal to the balance principle founded by General Charles de Gaulle in the Middle East. The principle states that the Arab nations also have the right to respect, in addition to that the current "Israeli" policy inspired by activists close to Zionists is not on the right path".

Roland Dumas affirmed that the negotiations between "Israeli" Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and PA President Mahmoud Abbass, will not lead to anything. He reiterated that the Palestinian-"Israeli" conflict is unsolvable, where US President Barak Obama stepped back from his pressures and warnings to "Israel" due to the Jewish Lobby pressure surrounding the US President".

Dumas indicated, "Any president or Western official to approach the Palestinian-"Israeli" conflict will collide into the settlers, and that is why they would reach the drastic end where "The solution is found in the absence of any solution".Roland Dumas also criticized French President Nicolas Sarkuzy's decision to include France in the united leadership of the NATO, believing that Sarkuzy made a big mistake in France's traditional position set by Charles de Gaulle.

DAMASCUS (AFP) - Angry mobs stormed the American and French embassies in Syria on Monday, after the two Western envoys visited the city of Hama, a flashpoint for protests against President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

The foreign ministry in Paris said three French staff were wounded in the embassy attack, while a US official said "no staff were injured."

Guards at the French embassy had to fire three warning shots, the foreign ministry said.

As Syrian security forces looked on, Assad supporters smashed their way into the compound with a battering ram, broke windows and destroyed the ambassador's car, according to a spokesman in Paris.

An AFP photographer at the scene said several windows in the French embassy were broken and Syrian flags were raised...

With French and British officials expressing confidence that they can eventually collect enough support for such a resolution, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev put a major roadblock in the path of a possible anti-Syria resolution in the UN Security Council, ruling out Russian support.

“I will not support such a resolution, even if my friends and allies ask me,” Medvedev insisted. He cited concerns over how a similar resolution against Libya was used as a pretext for a NATO war that has continued for months.

Without Russia's assent, there is no practical way of getting such a resolution through the UN's Security Council, particularly noticing how the resolution pertaining to Libya has created such a bloodbath in that country, courtesy of NATO and the US.

A resolution inspired by Western nations critical of civilian killings in politically-beleaguered Syria is facing threats from two veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council: Russia and China.

"It is pretty obvious the Russians and the Chinese are protecting their own economic and military interests in Syria," an Asian diplomat told IPS, "just as Western nations traditionally continue to protect Israel from any form of sanctions at all."

Both Russia and China also fear that a strong yet ambiguous Security Council resolution on Syria would provide a mandate for Western powers to misinterpret it and launch military strikes – as it did with Libya.

The leadership of both Russia and China are correct on this; those in the bowels of power in DC are desperate for another huge war, to attempt to distract the American people from their economic miseries, and take the focus off the horrendous job this administration has done on all fronts here.

And remember; Syria and Iran have a mutual defense pact. If Syria is attacked by the US, NATO, and/or Israel, Iran will be treaty bound to go to the aid of Syria; and that may well bring China and Russia in on the side of Syria and Iran.

Both countries are nuclear-armed, and have not been happy with the way the US and NATO have been behaving recently, spreading their hubristic impunity around the world.

Of course, one tactic China might employ which might prevent such a war from happening would be to dump their US treasury holdings and leaving the US government more fiscally punch-drunk than a fighter who has taken one too many hits to the head.

Syrian forces fired shots at hundreds of protesters who had gathered overnight in Homs city in defiance of warning by the authorities to halt what they called an insurrection, a rights campaigner said on Tuesday.

A member of the security police addressed the protesters at Clock Square through a loud speaker asking them to leave, and then the forces opened fire, said the human rights campaigner, who is in contact with protesters in the square.

Webmaster's Commentary:

As to how much of this action is legitimate human rights protests, and how much is that of covert operatives is hard to tell.

However, there is one thing which is very clear: Syria's leadership has been on Israel's "makeover" list in terms of regime change for a long time.

Israeli troops opened fire Sunday at a crowd of pro-Palestinian protesters who tried to break into the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights from neighboring Syria, killing as many as 14 people and wounding scores in a burst of violence marking the Arab defeat in the 1967 Mideast war.

"Unfortunately, extremist forces around us are trying today to breach our borders and threaten our communities and our citizens. We will not let them do that," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his Cabinet. He said security forces had been ordered to show "maximum restraint."

As the crowd reached the border, soldiers shouted warnings through megaphones. "Anybody who gets close to the fence is endangering his life," they said.

BEIRUT -- Syrian security forces fired on funeral processions that drew tens of thousands Saturday, one day after the bloodiest crackdown so far in the uprising against President Bashar Assad. The shootings pushed the two-day death toll to more than 120, and two lawmakers and a religious leader resigned in disgust over the killings.

The resignations were a possible sign of cracks developing in the regime's base in a nation where nearly all opposition figures have been either jailed or exiled during the 40-year dynasty of the Assad family.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States warned Friday it would take "additional steps" against Syria if it continues a brutal crackdown on protesters, a week after imposing tough sanctions on the Arab nation.

"The United States believes that Syria's deplorable actions toward its people warrant a strong international response," the White House said in one of its strongest statements yet since the outbreak of unrest there.

It warned that unless President Bashar Al-Assad's government halted its repression of peaceful pro-democracy protests, "the United States and its international partners will take additional steps to make clear our strong opposition to the Syrian government’s treatment of its people." ...

The dynamic and popular Lebanese leader Rafik Hariri, who did so much to rebuild Beirut, was murdered in a mysterious bombing on February 14, 2005. With no evidence to support the accusation, the Zionist-controlled media blamed Syria for the killing - a very strong indication that this was yet another Israeli false-flag terror attack/targeted killing.

The dynamic and popular Lebanese leader Rafik Hariri, who did so much to rebuild Beirut, was murdered in a mysterious bombing on February 14, 2005. With no evidence to support the accusation, the Zionist-controlled media blamed Syria for the killing - a very strong indication that this was yet another Israeli false-flag terror attack/targeted killing.

VIENNA — A U.S. envoy on Thursday suggested time was running out for Syria to cooperate with a U.N. atomic agency probe of alleged secret nuclear activities before the agency invokes its seldom-used authority to call for a special inspection – a possible prelude to U.N. Security Council involvement.

Despite repeated US warnings not to mention Israel during next week’s Vienna meetings of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), reports suggest that a number of Arab nations are planning to bring the topic up again and to urge Israel to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The US is expected to vigorously oppose this effort.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Good!

Should the US publicly reproach Arab countries for taking this tack, this will be a clear demonstration of the US's schizophrenic foreign policy, which supports Israel's nuclear program, unimpeded by any IAEA inspection, and opposes Iran's civilian nuclear program, which it does as a member of the NNPT, under the supervision of the IAEA.

The United States and its Western allies urged Arab countries Thursday to withdraw a resolution calling on Israel to sign up to a global anti-nuclear arms treaty so as not to jeopardise Middle East peace talks.

On the final day of an International Atomic Energy Agency meeting, the European Union joined the United States in arguing that zeroing in on the Jewish state would jeopardise a proposed conference in 2012 on the creation of a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction.

While much of the Western media have ignored the recent bloodshed on the Golan Heights, the limited reports that have been released appear to misunderstand the background to the present confrontation. Richard Lightbown explains the history.

Cables and contracts showing the Rothschild takeover of the US Treasury in the late 19th century.

Any change in this situation is not possible until a critical mass of thinking Americans are able to understand their own history and accept the fact that our entire economic lives have been spent in service to a tiny cartel of moneylenders.

It's the dark heart of Britain, the place where democracy goes to die, immensely powerful, equally unaccountable. But I doubt that one in 10 British people has any idea of what the Corporation of the City of London is and how it works. As Nicholas Shaxson explains in his fascinating book Treasure Islands, the Corporation exists outside many of the laws and democratic controls which govern the rest of the United Kingdom. The City of London is the only part of Britain over which parliament has no authority. This is ... an official old boys' network. In one respect at least the Corporation acts as the superior body: it imposes on the House of Commons a figure called the remembrancer: an official lobbyist who sits behind the Speaker's chair and ensures that, whatever our elected representatives might think, the City's rights and privileges are protected. The mayor of London's mandate stops at the boundaries of the Square Mile. The City has exploited this remarkable position to establish itself as a kind of offshore state, a secrecy jurisdiction which controls the network of tax havens housed in the UK's crown dependencies and overseas territories. This autonomous state within our borders is in a position to launder the ill-gotten cash of oligarchs, kleptocrats, gangsters and drug barons. It has also made the effective regulation of global finance almost impossible.

Note: To understand how democracy is easily circumvented, read this full article. For lots more from reliable sources on the hidden background to the control over governments held by financial powers, click here.

The greatest privatisation in history has gone unnoticed. It's time to take from the banks the power to produce money

Right now, this electronic money makes up over 97% of all the money in the economy. Only 3% of money is still in that old-fashioned form of real cash that can be touched.

Hard to believe, isn't it? Martin Wolf, one of the experts who sat on the independent commission on banking, put it bluntly, saying in the Financial Times that "the essence of the contemporary monetary system was the creation of money, out of nothing, by private banks' often foolish lending".

Here's how it works. When you ask the bank for the money to buy a one-bedroom box in London, the money that appears in your account isn't borrowed from some prudent grandmother's life savings. In fact, the bank simply types those numbers into your account, creating brand new money that you can now spend. As other banks do exactly the same, the amount of money in the economy grows and grows. Every new mortgage creates new money, which pushes up house prices just a little more and forces the next buyer to borrow even more from the banks. (A more detailed and fully-referenced explanation of this process is given in the book Where Does Money Come From? published by the New Economics Foundation.)

Through this process of creating money, banks have been able to inflate the money supply at a rate of 11.5% a year, pushing up the prices of houses and pricing out an entire generation.

Of course, the flipside to this creation of money is that with every new loan comes a new debt. This is the source of our mountain of personal debt – not money that had been prudently saved up by pensioners, but money that was created out of nothing by banks and lent to anyone and everyone. Eventually the debt burden becomes just too high, and we see the wave of defaults that triggered the start of the ongoing financial crisis.

But how did something as important as money become privatised? How did the power to create money fall into the hands of the same banks who caused the crisis, with such devastating consequences for millions of ordinary people?

By reclaiming this power, we can ensure that new money is not used to blow up house price bubbles and fund risky speculation. Instead, newly created money can be put in at the roots of the economy, through ordinary consumers. It will then end up with shops, businesses and factories, who can use it to invest, grow and create jobs. Simply "getting banks lending again" won't help when the public are already saddled under a mountain of debt. What we need is more money, not more debt. This is impossible while all money is created by banks when people go into debt.

Of course, we need to shelter this power to create money from vote-seeking politicians. But the power to create money is far too dangerous to leave in the hands of the banks who caused the crisis. Taking this power away from them is our best hope of both ending the current crisis, and preventing the next one.

It looks like Italy is going to default, and that will make Greece's problems look like a Sunday afternoon picnic. It is time to pull the plug, say its a failed experiment and go back to the economic system that worked in 1779. When it comes crashing down there are going to be some very difficult times. We need to be on guard because as soon as the dust settles you're going to see the money junkies back out there saying we can create a new private central bank... and we need to basically tar, feather and HANG anybody making that suggestion.

This is supposed to be the beginning of the 3rd millennium. Have we not learned to keep money addicts away from the centers of finance?

I don't think the bankers can survive this crash that's about to hit... I have been waiting for this collapse so that we can avoid a violent bloody revolution. If Europe dissolves then the party is definitely over.

I usually don't post anything on the weekends...but what is now happening in Europe isn't anything that I can brush off until next week. Take a look at this interview that was aired on public television in Ireland...

Reuters

Nov 14 (Reuters) - Mario Monti, the economist who will head an emergency Italian government following the departure of Silvio Berlusconi, brings credentials earned in a decade of battles as a European Commissioner from the 1990s...

Citi's Willem Buiter whose succinct analysis a few weeks ago sealed the coffin of the worthless EFSF, has just come out with another knock out punch this morning after telling Bloomberg TV what everyone else knows is true, but is terrified to say out loud: namely that, "time is running out fast." He adds: " I think we have maybe a few months -- it could be weeks, it could be days -- before there is a material risk of a fundamentally unnecessary default by a country like Spain or Italy which would be a financial catastrophe dragging the European banking system and North America with it.

Please, as reasonably soon as possible, if you can: look at putting what assets you can into gold, silver, and precious metals now.

The excrement may well be very close to being circulated by the ventilation system in the Western banking system, and the whole, fragile business may be coming down soon like an intricate, but unsustainable, house of cards.

At the close of business on Tuesday, the debt of the federal government exceeded $15 trillion for the first time--with the largest single owner of the publicly held portion of that debt being the Federal Reserve.

In its latest monthly report, the Federal Reserve said that as of Sept. 28, it owned $1.665 trillion in U.S. Treasury securities. That was more than double the $812 billion in U.S. Treasury securities the Fed said it owned as of Sept. 29, 2010.

the last paragraph above simply describes a book-keeping trick, which is intended to deceive. IT is NOT "intragovernmental debt", because the Federal Reserve is no more " a Federal" governmental entity than is Federal Express.

... not counting the $47 trillion (maybe more) borrowed and spent to cover the losses caused by the mortgage-backed securities fraud.

George W. Bush, George H. Bush, and Clinton Each Prosecuted Financial Crime More Aggressively than ObamaTop economists and financial experts agree that our economy will never recover unless Wall Street fraud is prosecuted.

But the government has more or less made it official policy not to prosecute fraud, and instead to do everything necessary to cover up for Wall Street.

The federal agency that insures pensions for one in seven Americans ran the largest deficit last year in its 37-year history.The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. said Tuesday that it ran a $26 billion imbalance for the budget year that ended Sept. 30.

The agency has been battered by the weak economy, which has brought more bankruptcies and failed pension plans.

Its pension obligations rose by $4.5 billion. The PBGC also earned less money in the stock market, which helps to fund pension plans. Returns were $3.6 billion, half what it earned the previous year.

Joshua Gotbaum, the agency director, says taxpayers may have to bail out the agency "eventually" if Congress doesn't raise companies' insurance premiums. He didn't give a timeframe.

The U.S. Postal Service said Tuesday it has lost $5.1 billion in the past year, pushing it closer to imminent default on a multibillion-dollar payment and to future bankruptcy as the weak economy and increased Internet use drive down mail volume.The financial losses for the year ended Sept. 30 came despite deep cuts of more than 130,000 jobs in recent years and the closing of some smaller local post offices.

Britain's young unemployed are being sent to work for supermarkets and budget stores for up to two months for no pay and no guarantee of a job, the Guardian can reveal.

Under the government's work experience programme young jobseekers are exempted from national minimum wage laws for up to eight weeks and are being offered placements in Tesco, Poundland, Argos, Sainsbury's and a multitude of other big name businesses.

Work without pay? Sounds like slavery to me! And all these big companies getting this free labor means they don't have to hire paid labor! So this is going to increase the jobless problem!

Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace-- but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

As I type these words, the question on everyone's mind is whether this international revolution that started in Iceland and has already spread to Egypt and the Middle East will continue to spread across America. At the gas pumps and the supermarket checkout lines, the people speak of rebellion openly, if less furtively with each passing day.

There really is no way to avoid it. The money-addicts have created a world where firing the government is not only the best option; for most of us it is the only option. To not revolt is to condemn our children to lives of starvation and hopeless debt slavery to the Private Central Bankers, Goldman-Sachs, Morgan Stanley, etc. et. al. under a government with a demonstrated history of looting the people to feed the bankers, a government that views our lives as cheap and easily sacrificed for wars of conquest, or to be discarded without complaint to keep Israel happy when it attacks Americans in international waters.

Even now, the US Government prepares to solve its present debt crisis by embezzling the American taxpayer of their retirements by defaulting on the loans made to the US Government by Social Security. They will praise your silent consent as 'patriotism, but is such silence really patriotic? The men who created this nation did not think so!

"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains set lightly upon you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."--Samuel Adams

The tragic reality is that the US Government has already declared war on the people of the United States. Bit by bit our rights are trampled on. Our wealth is confiscated for the benefit of a foreign power. Our homes are confiscated to pay the gambling debts of the bankers. Our emails are read, our phone calls listened to, our computers ransacked, all without warrant or due process. Torture and extrajudicial executions are the new reality of life under this tyranny. Our freedoms are confiscated to so that the government does not have to look with fear upon the people.

"It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace-- but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" -- Patrick Henry

What Patrick Henry really meant in those final words went beyond mere drama. Patrick Henry declared that he would no longer be a slave, either to King George or to the Bank of England. He would be free, or he would be dead, but either way King George III would no longer own him as a slave, nor the Bank of England enjoy automatic title to the proceeds of his labor, so better for England to quit and save the lives of their soldiers then to waste lives seeking a slave who refused to be a slave.

Tragically, money-addicts never care about the lives of their own soldiers.

"Military men are dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy." -- Henry Kissinger, quoted by Bob Woodward in The Final Days

So, King George III, in the throes of his money-addiction, and as owned by the Bank of England as the present government is by the Federal Reserve, tried to prove Patrick Henry wrong, which led to the humiliation at Yorktown.

Addicts to other peoples' money know no limits, no morality, no sense of fair play. They are hopelessly trapped by the allure of glittering gold. Like a Magpie, they simply must possess all that sparkles!

Bernie Madoff is the classic example. Co-founder of NASDAQ, with more money than any one man could spend in a lifetime, and he still felt compelled compelled to defraud his investors for another $65 billion. This is mental illness; the money-addiction that grips Wall Street and Washington DC, which symptoms manifest as (in one example) apsychotic compulsion to wear the entire productivity of a worker's life as a decoration on one's wrist. Not content with that, next year it will be the need to wear the the entire productivity of 100 workers' lives as a decoration on one's wrist that will drive the money addicts to greater crimes against the people.

Money addicts do not see their behavior as wrong or evil. Secure in their religious delusions that wealth is the sign of God's favor, they see themselves as heroes and heroines. Lloyd Blankfein, the head of Goldman Sachs, declared he was doing "God's work" at the time we now know Goldman Sachs was looting taxpayer money directly from the US Treasury to their own pockets. In their own minds the money addicts are the good guys; the stars of the world, the rightful inheritors of all of life's blessings. Sadly, history has shown that it is often easier to kill money-junkies than to cure their addiction, let alone get them to change their minds about themselves and to acknowledge their problem and its high social costs.

So, yes, a revolution in the streets of America is now an inevitability, albeit a revolution to be fought not with guns and bombs, but with keyboards and the truth. The money-addicts in Wall Street and DC have created a situation in which revolution is unavoidable, and already we see the hired things of the bankers cracking the heads of those people who dare to proclaim their refusal to pay debts not of their own making.

And as has been the case in Egypt, the US military, openly abused on their mortgages by J. P. Morgan, stand with the people. So do many police officers whose pension funds were destroyed by the mortgage-backed securities fraud.

The message to those who would rebuild their failed financial palaces on the backs of the people is thus a simple one. We shall not bail you out ever again. Yes, you may murder those who refuse to live on less so that you may have more, but it shall not change the final outcome. Living or dead, we are your slaves no longer.

That was Patrick Henry's message all those years ago, and it is still true today.

Chinese President Hu Jintao is scheduled to arrive this morning. State Hillary Clinton has a day of APEC meetings at the East-West Center, and Obama arrives tomorrow.

My guess is that Hu Jintao will be told that unless China starts buying US and Europe debt again that the Chinese stock market will be taken down, with last night's 5% drop a warning shot across the bow. Problem is that China does not react well to being threatened!

Watching the cost of servicing Italy’s debt surge past the level that triggered bailouts in Greece, Ireland and Portugal, I found one of Kipling’s verses forming in my mind:This is midnight — let no star

Delude us — dawn is very far.This is the tempest long foretold —Slow to make head but sure to hold.

Italy is the third-largest economy in the EU, and the eighth largest on the planet. Its outstanding debt of €1.9 trillion (£1.6 trillion) accounts for 25 per cent of all the debt in the eurozone.

Stick a fork in it, the eurozone as we know it is done. That’s the message we’re hearing from every media outlet and talking head this morning. But whether the EU survives in its current incarnation or takes on a new form, the agenda remains the same, the evisceration of all national sovereignty and the centralization of power into a dictatorial federal superstate.

As Chancellor Merkel and PM Sarkozy search for a solution that doesn’t exist they continue to lose credibility. Nothing of substance has been agreed upon that is legal and can be implemented. At the IMF Christina LeGarde is frantically waving her arms like a cheerleader telling anyone that will listen that if the six sovereigns in financial trouble are not aided the euro will fail and peace in Europe will disappear. The elitists are frantic because they cannot find a solution. LeGarde says without help there will be ten years of depression. She obviously hasn’t done her homework. Try 30 or more years. Sarkozy, Merkel and Jans Weidmann council member of the ECB has said the ECB cannot bail out governments by printing money.

Even the "tres formidable" IMF head, Christina LaGarde is thoroughly incapable of finding that 11th marble, and it looks as though the Euro is on its last legs.

Its not inconceivable that we could be in full crisis mode by the end of this week. The situation with Italy feels increasingly like one that has little chance of materially improving until some extreme pressure is put on someone to act. It may not come to a head this week but the signs are not good that we can avoid an extreme situation emerging soon.

The big problem: Berlusconi doesn't seem like he's in an urgent mood to make reforms, the ECB isn't doing much, and China and Brazil have dropped out of the picture.

Under the system of private central banks issuing all public currency as a loan at interest, the total debt always exceeds the total amount of money available to pay that debt. So, one can see the European Union (and indeed any nation or nations under the slavery of a private central bank) as a boat with 11 holes in the bottom, but only ten corks. Everything being done to "save" Europe amounts to yanking a cork from one hole and pounding it into another one in full view of the cameras while proclaiming that one is working on the problem. Yet the water in the bottom of the boat continues to rise and the ultimate outcome has not changed one bit. Water pours in through the hole underneath Greece's seat on the boat (drilled there by Goldman Sachs, I might add), so the cork pounded into the hole under Italy is yanked out and pounded into the hole under Greece. Now the water is flooding underneath Italy, to the cork under France's seat gets yanked out and moved over. Now the leak is under France, etc. Because all new money created by a private central bank is a loan, one can add a new cork to the boat, but only at the cost of a new hole in its bottom.

Everyone in that boat is doomed, and the only thing they can choose is which one gets to drown last.

Mirow had talks with officials in the Turkish Parliament, EU Minister Egemen Ba??? and Energy Minister Taner Y?ld?z this week to test the waters, not only in the economy, but also in the political sphere.

Evaluating Turkey’s economy, Mirow said the country has seen impressive growth, certainly being among the front runners globally in terms of growth.

“There are vulnerabilities attached to this, especially a relatively high current account deficit,” he said, adding that inflation, which is high as well and a controllable amount of volatility in terms of foreign exchange.

The European Commission is seeking far tighter control of national budgets to combat the euro zone's debt crisis, a senior official said on Friday, as the ECB's chief urged rapid action on a euro zone fund for rescuing countries in trouble.

With the crisis set to topple a fifth euro zone government this weekend, the likely next Spanish prime minister appealed to financial markets for breathing space as he begins tackling his nation's problems - something they may not give him.

In Berlin, Chancellor Angela Merkel made clear she favored a step-by-step approach to tackling a crisis that is spreading to large countries at the heart of the euro project such as Italy, Spain and possibly even France.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel rejected French calls to deploy the European Central Bank as a crisis backstop, defying global leaders and investors calling for more urgent action to halt the turmoil.

As the crisis sent borrowing costs in core economies outside Germany to euro-era records, Merkel listed using the ECB as lender of last resort alongside joint euro-area bonds and a “snappy debt cut” as proposals that won’t work.

European Central Bank Vice President Lucas Papademos is ready to take on the job.

Papademos is a member of the Trilateral Commission. The American equivalent would be for Obama to resign and have Ben Bernanke become President. I think I would not expect much from this government if I were Greek.

"Lucas Papademos will be as of tomorrow the new prime minister of the country after the agreement that the outgoing Prime Minister George Papandreou and the opposition head Antonis Samaras reached last night," reports the Greek daily Ta Nea.

Papademos is a 100% bankster tool. There will never ever be even the suggestion of a referendum on any program the banksters want passed. It will simply be passed.

Papademos is currently a visiting professor of public policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He was previously a vice president of the European Central Bank and also served as a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

...

From Wikipedia: He has served as Senior Economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston in 1980. He joined the Bank of Greece in 1985 as Chief Economist, rising to Deputy Governor in 1993 and Governor in 1994. During his time as Governor of the national bank, Mr Papademos was involved in Greece's transition from the drachma to the euro as its national currency.[3]

They are directly saying Goldman Sachs has taken over Europe. They also say they are Freemasons and part of the Trilateral Commission.

He mentions the book "Goldman Sachs rules the world".

I have to say, we know that Goldman Sachs rules the U.S. government. Most of the people Obama placed as his advisers are Goldman Sachs people. The non-government Federal Reserve (privately owned bank) are all Goldman Sachs people.

Seven University of California students were arrested and dozens of others suffered bruises and abrasions following a police crackdown on an attempted encampment at a local plaza on Wednesday. ­"We had the tents set up for about a half an hour when the police decided they wanted to shut down the camp," student protester Eric Uribe recalled in an interview with RT. "What the students did is they set up a human wall around the tents. Soon after that, the police approached with full force in riot gear, with batons. We had no intention to move, but they jabbed some of us repeatedly in the stomach, pulling people onto the floor and arresting them." Hundreds of protesters had gathered at the town's Sproul Plaza to protest against tuition fee increases and public education funding cuts.

Atlanta and Oakland joined a growing list of cities losing patience with weeks of protests against economic equality, evicting and arresting scores of people and leaving one person in Oakland critically injured...

Thing are heating up on the streets of America, as #Occupy protests continue to rage in multiple U.S. cities.

Yesterday, the city of Oakland attempted to disperse crowds. Protesters, exercising their Constitutional protections of free expression, assembly and redress of grievances, refused to move.

Occupy Oakland demonstrators clashed all over downtown Oakland on Tuesday night with police who lobbed tear gas at least three times in futile attempts to fully disperse the more than 1,000 people who took to the streets after the early-morning raid of the movement’s encampment.

Brian Kelly, who co-owns a brew pub with Sabeghi, said his business partner served as an Army Ranger in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said Sabeghi told him he was arrested and beaten by a group of policemen as he was leaving the protest to go home.

“He told me he was in the hospital with a lacerated spleen and that the cops had jumped him,” Kelly said. “They put him in jail, and he told them he was injured, and they denied him medical treatment for about 18 hours.”

Webmaster's Commentary:

Preventing injured people from seeking medical help is a well-known tactic of the IDF and one they are clearly teaching to American Police sent to Israel for "terror" training.

A protester in Oakland, Scott Olsen, was hit in the head by a police projectile in the confrontation two days ago. Olsen, an Iraq-war veteran, is in critical condition in the hospital and may die of his injuries.

No problem. As soon as you jail the Wall Street crooks behind the mortgage-backed securities fraud that cost this nation $45 trillion, forgive the American people for that debt not of their own making, and shut down the Federal Reserve System that by design creates more debt than money, we'll call off the revolution.

My Disclaimer:

I present this information in my capacity as a human being, under Common Law, exercising my fundamental God given rights and freedoms. This information represents my private thoughts and beliefs and has been compiled and expressed for educational purposes only. In no way should it be construed as either legal or financial advice. If anyone feels a need to determine the accuracy of this information and the effectiveness of apply any of it, I strongly recommend consulting a competent expert on this subject matter.

Here's a Clue:Look the one place "They" never talk about.Look to your heart, as your competent expert lies within."Seek and you shall find."